50@50 – Torry Pines State Reserve, San Diego, CA
Torry Pines is a Natural Reserve within the city limits of San Diego. The city exudes culture, both the high arts and natural culture of its place. It encompasses the fusion of ethnicities, a unique landscape and an intrinsic relationship with the sea. Art, music and theater are embodied with local identity over two hundred years in the making. When the Spanish found the first California mission here in 1769, over 20,000 Kumeyaay (one of over 50 tribes within its modern borders) forged a thriving agricultural community in Southern California with separate winter and summer villages. By 1900, their numbers dwindled to about 1000, but they are currently experiencing growth.
The reserve is an anomaly, a natural landscape surrounded on three sides by the freeway, office buildings and neighborhoods; the fourth side faces the windy ocean. Looking out from the cliff or up from the beach, it reputedly looks much like it has for centuries – without trail markers of course. The vegetation grows tremendously dense and is quite diverse. How do lupines grow in the sand? The Torry Pine tree grows only in two places in the world, and this is one of them. The trails are numerous and interconnect; one can explore a half mile or many miles, on the cliff or down onto the beach and rocks. They’re mostly sand, but easy otherwise.
San Diego’s rich history has allowed for the coexistence of various cultures, and celebrates its historical heritage along with the present and the future through its unique food, visual art, cultural trails and performing arts.